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Budget breakthrough in reach, as Senate Dems drop Dreamer demand

Don't kill me if this is somehow old news...

Senate Democrats are willing to drop their demand that relief for Dreamers be tied to any long-term budget agreement — a potential breakthrough on spending talks, but one that could face opposition from their House counterparts.

The shift comes in response to the deal struck between Senate leaders Monday to reopen the government and begin debate on an immigration bill next month. Meanwhile, budget negotiators are expressing optimism that a two-year agreement to lift stiff caps on defense and domestic spending is increasingly within reach.

“We’re viewing [immigration and spending] on separate terms because they are on separate paths,” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said Tuesday.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s “procedural concession means we’ve got a deadline and a process,” Durbin added. “That to me is a significant step forward. It’s not everything I wanted, that’s for sure, but it’s a step forward.”

But House Democrats have signaled they are not ready to go along with a long-term budget deal without a fix to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that President Donald Trump is ending.

“We are insisting that these things be in the same negotiation,” said a senior House Democratic aide. “To us, what’s important is are these talks linked or not linked? To us, they are linked.”

The division among Democrats is complicating negotiations, as lawmakers in both parties face intense pressure — and a two-week time crunch — to show progress on government funding, immigration and a raft of other issues that have resulted in the government operating on stopgap spending bills since September.

Both parties are eager for a long-term budget agreement, with GOP defense hawks furious about uncertainty for the Pentagon and liberal Democrats concerned about deep cuts to domestic programs. But any legislation to boost spending by upwards of $250 billion over two years would likely need broad bipartisan backing in both chambers, as House conservatives have already hinted they’ll balk.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), another member of Democratic leadership, said that although she would prefer a deal to protect young undocumented immigrants be part of budget negotiations, the agreement reached with McConnell could make that impossible. The Kentucky Republican has said the Senate would turn to an immigration bill only if the government is still funded, and few Democrats seem to want another shutdown.

“Feb. 8, we’re going to have another [stopgap bill]. But we have to have that budget agreement in order to move forward. … That’s the goal,” Murray said. “And then the deal is that if DACA is not part of that, then it will be the next thing considered.”

“Everyone’s first preference is to get it all done by the 8th,” a Senate Democratic aide said on Wednesday. “We haven’t speculated on what happens if it doesn’t all come together.”

If Democrats are indeed willing to deal on spending caps without a firm commitment on DACA, it would represent a significant shift in the budget talks, which have stalled for months over immigration.

“I think everybody has a pretty general idea about where it’s going to end up. But this has been again another casualty of the DACA issue, that they’ve refused to conclude those,” Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) said Wednesday when asked how close leaders are to a spending caps deal.

“There’s gonna have to be some agreement on the spending caps, I believe [by Feb. 8], because I am skeptical whether the House in particular will vote for another continuing resolution. That’s the dilemma created by our Democratic colleagues,”

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/...n-reach-366992